The usual recommendation when using sourdough starters instead of commercial yeast is to replace the yeast with starter equal to up to 40% of the total flour in the recipe/formula. But how do you know how long it will take before the dough is ready for the oven? I've looked through the forum and found a few experiments conducted to help determine the answer. Please note the assumptions for these times: dough is at room temperature (RT) unless otherwise noted, starter is kept at 100% hydration (feeding equal parts flour & water by weight), starter has been recently refreshed (not used straight from the fridge).

The info from Pete-zza can be found in the thread: "Re: Tom Lehmann's NY Style Pizza". I've tried to give a little summary below.

Reply #151, 20% starter, hydration not specified, but mentions that it "was like a pancake batter": 45hrs refrigerated, 2hrs RT, then baked. Uses an autolyse--reported as "exceptionally good".

Reply #165, 20% starter, stiff (63% hydration): 9-10hr RT--reported "the pizza was one of the best Lehmann pizzas I have made, with a crust as good as any I have made in my many experiments with the Lehmann dough--whether based on retardation (refrigeration) or not. The crust was chewy yet soft and tender and with a nice pleasant flavor.

Reply #175, 20% starter, stiff (63% hydration): simplified dough preferment process, uses an autolyse, uses a food processor instead of stand mixer, 10hr RT--reported only a small amount of expansion seen in the dough but, "it had a perfect amount of elasticity and extensibility" and produced "a pizza of very high quality."

Mike,You picked a very loaded question that depends on quite a few variables. The best answer I can provided is, it depends. Unfortunately there is no simple answer. Factors that influence how long it will take before the dough is ready include: How long does it take your specific starters to double? What temps are you keeping them at, 68F (room temp) or in the 70Fs? How active was your starter before you added it to you to your final dough? What was your final dough temp after mixing? What was the pH of the dough? What type of flour are you using in feeding your dough? As well as many other factors.

I know this is not the answer you were looking for, but the best answer I can give is: play around with different recipes, formulas and temps, keep a log of your trials and find out what works best for you.

« Last Edit: April 16, 2012, 10:07:58 PM by JimmyG »

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Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Along with what Jimmy said, a few other factors that also affect fermentation time.

Flour: doughs made with weaker flours ferment fasterHydration: higher hydrated doughs (relative to the flour used) will ferment fasterSalt: doughs with less salt ferment a bit faster (I believe)Aeration of starter: whipping air into a starter prior to using will make the dough ferment fasterQuantity of dough: a bigger mass of dough will ferment faster (the mass dough effect). Smaller batches cool off quicker.Gluten structure: a dough with a stronger gluten matrix or well developed gluten structure will seemingly ferment faster as well. It basically tents up the air inside better.

There are other direct and indirect factors I am sure, but that is about as much as I know.

Of course, along with the generalize times, you will also have to smell and feel the dough at different stages to have a good assessment of the progress of the dough. As far as when to ball or when to use the dough is a personal choice. Some like using younger doughs while others like a more mature dough.

Great (and practical) stuff, I love it! While I agree that experience is the best teacher, with a forum like this, those with no (or little) experience can also draw on that of others until they develop enough of their own. For me, I've been scrounging around the forum looking for clues. I decided it'd be nice to have the info all together under "Starters/Sponges" for those, like me, who aren't sure what type(s) of pizza they'd like to make but do know it's going to be made with 100% sourdough starter. I was hoping if I "tossed a brick" I'd "get a jade" as the Chinese say (ie, threw out my worthless idea to get your priceless one).

Mike, thanks for the post. I have been making pizzas for years, using commercial yeast and when I first switched to started using starters, I wanted some general guidelines to work from. Your post would have been a great help. Right now I am at 2.75% Ischia 18 hours around 68 degrees, then 4 hours refrigerated - though I use 100% whole wheat, so it is different then those using white flours. I still am not sure whether the longer fermentation times will be better than shorter times with higher starter.

Mike, I don't use any sugar, salt is at 3%. The other complicating factor is we are now heading into spring. Over the winter, the house is usually around 68, in the dead of summer it will be about 72 since we run ac, For the few weeks we don't run heat or ac, temp in house can be as low as 65 and high 70's so overnight fermentation can vary pretty wildly.

If I use 2% Ischia starter and ferment dough (Caputo 00 flour, 2.8% salt, 62% HR) for 36 hours at 65F then another 12 hours at 78F, will that yield more or less sourdough flavor than using 10% starter for 12 hours at 65F? Or should the flavor be similar? In short, does the amount of starter directly affect the amount of sourdough (tangyness) flavor in the dough? If that's the case, do people intentionally adjust the level of starter to the amount of sourdough flavor they desire, then use the recommended fermentation schedule accordingly?

If I use 2% Ischia starter and ferment dough (Caputo 00 flour, 2.8% salt, 62% HR) for 36 hours at 65F then another 12 hours at 78F, will that yield more or less sourdough flavor than using 10% starter for 12 hours at 65F? Or should the flavor be similar? In short, does the amount of starter directly affect the amount of sourdough (tangyness) flavor in the dough? If that's the case, do people intentionally adjust the level of starter to the amount of sourdough flavor they desire, then use the recommended fermentation schedule accordingly?

The "tangyness" comes from fermentation that is mature. You can mature a dough in 12 hours using say 30% of flour, or do something much slower. The temperature that you ferment is the determining factor in the final amount of tang, along with how much starter you use to get there.

Craig's long, slow workflow achieves consistency by keeping the temp constant. It also imparts good flavor by fermenting for a long period of time. I believe there is a texture factor as well from the nearly three days of fermentation. But you can get basically the same results with a 24 hour workflow using a modest amount of starter and a mild temperature.

Thanks John, that is exactly the answer I was looking for. I'm going for round three this weekend using my Ischia starter and am hoping to develop the flavor I'm looking for using Craig's workflow. I tried 1.5% starter using Craig's workflow last weekend and it didn't turn out too well (possibly overwet dough from a weighing error, not enough rise). I'm guessing my starter doesn't pack as much punch as Craigs, so I'm going to up my starter to 2%.

Thanks John, that is exactly the answer I was looking for. I'm going for round three this weekend using my Ischia starter and am hoping to develop the flavor I'm looking for using Craig's workflow. I tried 1.5% starter using Craig's workflow last weekend and it didn't turn out too well (possibly overwet dough from a weighing error, not enough rise). I'm guessing my starter doesn't pack as much punch as Craigs, so I'm going to up my starter to 2%.

What temperature did you ferment at? How did you maintain the temperature? Did you confirm that it was not colder than your thought? AOTBE, a wetter dough should have risen more.

CL

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

I'm using a 36 quart Coleman Extreme cooler with 1 cup of frozen water that I'm changing out every 4-6 hours. I leave the thermometer in the cooler to check the temp and it was maintained at 65F pretty much down to the degree for the entire 36 hour fermentation last time around. Here's a pic of the cooler and my Ischia starter. This is my starter about 3-3.5 hours after removing if from the fridge today and feeding it. The top of the brown rubber band is the level after feeding, the colored rubber band is 2" above that.

If I use 2% Ischia starter and ferment dough (Caputo 00 flour, 2.8% salt, 62% HR) for 36 hours at 65F then another 12 hours at 78F, will that yield more or less sourdough flavor than using 10% starter for 12 hours at 65F? Or should the flavor be similar? In short, does the amount of starter directly affect the amount of sourdough (tangyness) flavor in the dough? If that's the case, do people intentionally adjust the level of starter to the amount of sourdough flavor they desire, then use the recommended fermentation schedule accordingly?

Damian,

Out of curiosity, I wondered if member November's methodology as discussed at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5028.msg42572.html#msg42572 would apply to a natural starter, such as your Ischia starter. It seems to me that so long as the starter used for the two scenarios is the same, the methodology should work. So, I took a stab at calculating how much of your Ischia starter would be needed if you decided to use only a 12-hour fermentation period at a temperature of 78 degrees F (25.6 degrees C).

For the reference rate, I used the scenario in which you would ferment the dough for 36 hours at 65 degrees F (18.3 degrees C), followed by 12 hours at a temperature of 78 degrees F (18.3 degrees C). For this scenario, the amount of starter would be 2%. For the predicted rate, I used the scenario in which you would ferment the dough for 12 hours at 78 degrees F.

Using the online calculator at http://www.ecalc.com/ to do all the calculations and attempting to apply November's teachings, I came up with a value of 11.43% Ischia starter to equate the results of the two scenarios. If that number is correct, it is not far off from the 10% figure that you mentioned above. What remains to be seen is if the two different doughs would perform the same and produce the same results. For example, possibly they would be similar from a fermentation and management standpoint but yield different tastes in the finished crusts.

I get 9.70% which is really close to his 10% (but I donít believe this is an accurate conversion).

I plugged in some of my observations using Ischia; when the changes in time were less than 12 hours, the variance between Novemberís formula culture % predictions and my observations were very small Ė generally plus or minus only a couple tenths of a percent or so Ė some were right on. As the change in time got larger, the error also increased. When the change in time approached 24 hours, the errors were getting as high as 300% (as in the formula predicted 2.4% and I used 7.5%). All the predictions when going to a much shorter time (i.e. 48 to 24 hours) were way too low. I would suggest caution when trying to use Novemberís formula to make large changes in a SD formula.

With respect to Novemberís example, I canít recreate his sin calculations. For example, he states:

sin (20 / 36)^2.1 = 0.2869326322

Excel or any calculator I plug it into says it equals 0.2609281104. This appears to be true of all of his sin calculations. I thought it might be rounding, but even taking the numbers to the extremes of rounding, I canít get all the way to his numbers. Do you know if he is doing something other than what one would expect when he sees sin(x)?

With respect to testing my spreadsheet, I got very close to his example but not exactly, however it looks like the difference is in the sin calculation.

Craig

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

I went through the exercise just for kicks and wasn't completely sure of my math either. For the sine calculation, I used the online calculator at http://www.ecalc.com/ with the sin key. To be sure of the calculations, I ran November's numbers through the calculator first before using it for my calculations. When I got his numbers, I used the same approach for my sin values.

You had (Reference rate avg x 48 hours x 2%)/(65F x 12hours) - that was what Everlast asked, but not your example which would have been (Reference rate avg x 48 hours x 2%)/(78F x 12hours) which is what I have above.

The formula changes didn't have a meaningful impact on my other calculations. It still looks like the formula will work pretty well for Ischia (assuming you are 62%HR +/- 2%, salt 2.7 +/- 3%) when the time change is less than 24 hours. I would not rely on the results for large changes in time such as 48 to 24 hours.

CL

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

It's right according to November's formula, but I would bet it's off by at least 150% in reality, and probably a lot more than that. I tend to doubt that you could put in enough Ischia for a 12 hour rise at 65F. I think you'd dissolve your dough first.

CL

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

It's right according to November's formula, but I would bet it's off by at least 150% in reality, and probably a lot more than that. I tend to doubt that you could put in enough Ischia for a 12 hour rise at 65F. I think you'd dissolve your dough first.

Craig,

I suspect that you are right. Several years ago, in 2006, I conducted an experiment, which is reported in Reply 96 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,986.msg25896.html#msg25896, in which I made two identical dough balls, using 3.1% of an immature Ischia culture with an estimated hydration of around 62%. One of the dough balls was fermented at a room temperature of about 75 degrees F and the other dough ball was fermented in my wine unit at a temperature of around 60 degrees F (this was an estimate since the temperature control unit was an analog unit, since replaced with a digital one). Both dough balls were fermented for 12 hours.

I ran the above numbers through November's system and got a value of 7.44% as the amount of Ischia starter to use to get the dough fermented at 60 degrees F to double after 12 hours. That is more than double the 3.1% value mentioned above. You will note that I mentioned in Reply 96 that for every 15 degrees rise in temperature the rate of fermentation doubles. Some time later, November told me that that simplistic statement was not right. He set the record straight in Reply 53 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.msg37297/topicseen.html#msg37297.

It's right according to November's formula, but I would bet it's off by at least 150% in reality, and probably a lot more than that. I tend to doubt that you could put in enough Ischia for a 12 hour rise at 65F. I think you'd dissolve your dough first.

CL

Craig, is this what you mean by dissolve your dough? This is the result of 2% Ischia starter at 65F for 36 hours. I then had it at about 80F for 8 hours, and then 84F for 2-3 hours. The dough was completely ruined. Even reballing it couldn't save it. I've never seen this before. What did I do wrong? Too high of a temp?

Peter, I used the 10% number from the guide to fermentation time at the very beginning of this thread.